1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is a face guard that may be attached to a sport helmet of the type utilized in baseball, football, and other sports as well.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For many years sport helmets have been utilized to protect a sporting participant from head injuries. Conventional helmets of this type are typically formed of rigid plastic and are shaped as a unitary structure that covers the crown of a person""s head and which also has side flaps that protect the sides of a person""s head and which cover the ears of the wearer. Protective helmets of this type are particularly important to safeguard the well-being of children and adolescents, since such individuals are younger, more inexperienced, and therefore likely to make many mistakes in playing a sport that could result in very serious injury without some form of protection.
Protective helmets of this type are particularly important for use by batters in the game of baseball since the head injury resulting from a ball thrown quite hard by a pitcher can be a very serious matter indeed. Moreover, in juvenile sports, the person pitching the ball will often throw a pitch with considerable speed, but with very erratic accuracy. It is therefore important for a batter to be protected as much as possible from a pitched ball. While conventional baseball helmets provide suitable protection to the top and sides of the head of a player, the helmet itself cannot provide protection to the players face, since it would obscure a players vision.
Various face guards have been designed for attachment to a baseball or football helmet so as to provide face protection for the player. Conventional devices of this type provide a grid of rigid bars that pass across the players face and are secured to the opposing sides of the helmet. However, such conventional devices typically require some type of modification to the structure of the helmet.
Some face guards have been constructed so as to avoid drilling extra holes in a sport helmet or to avoid mounting devices permanently attached to the basic helmet. Some of these involve threaded ferrules that are screwed together through the ear holes of the side flaps to clamp the side ends of the face guard to the structure of the helmet. However, when the components of such devices are screwed together to clamp the structure of the helmet therebetween, they often produce excessive stress on the plastic structure of the helmet so that the helmet cracks and must be discarded. Such devices have therefore not been commercially successful.
The present invention provides a sport helmet face guard that not only can be attached to the helmet without any modification or alteration whatsoever to the helmet, but also a system that avoids damage to the helmet by the attachment mechanism. The present invention departs from prior approaches employing rigid structural attachment mechanisms, and instead employs at least one resilient coupling to firmly, but removable secure the face guard to the helmet.
The invention involves a face guard that may be attached to a conventional baseball batting helmet. It may also be used in the sport of football and attached to a conventional football helmet. In fact, the invention may be utilized with any sporting helmet that is formed as a rigid structure and which has portions at the side of the wearer""s head with openings at the location of the ears.
The key aspect of the invention is that the face guard can be attached to and detached from the sports helmet without any modification to the helmet itself and without danger of damaging the helmet. Helmets of this type are invariably provided with openings at the ear positions of the wearer. The face guard of the invention is attached to the helmet by one or more resilient connectors or couplings at these ear openings.
Attachment is by means of a reasonably stiff, but somewhat flexible, resilient, rubber ear hole attachment piece. The attachment piece has a generally disc-shaped configuration with at least one, and preferably a pair of mutually parallel channels defined in the periphery of the otherwise disc-shaped structure. The provision of these channels defines an inboard disc-shaped flange that can be resiliently deformed and inserted through the ear hole opening with the remaining portion of the attachment piece residing on the exterior of the helmet at the ear position. The outer, generally disc-shaped flange of each attachment piece or coupling may also be resiliently deformed and inserted through an opening in a mounting clip on one side of the face guard, or a pair of attachment mounting clips on the face guard located on both of the opposing sides of the helmet.
The attachment member or mounting clips of the face guard are preferably flat, plate-like, washer-shaped structures with a circular central opening therethrough. However the mounting clips need not necessarily be complete rings, but can have a C-shaped configuration which will still require resilient deformation of the mounting clip engaging piece or flange that fits into the mounting clip. The face guard may also employ a pair of short wire rod stabilizers that hook around the edges of the helmet at the corners of the face opening.
In one broad aspect the present invention may be considered to be a face guard for a sport helmet having side flaps with ear openings defined therethrough. The face guard of the invention is comprised of an open face protection grid of rigid bars curved convex forward and having opposing side ends. At least one rigid mounting clip having a helmet attachment opening defined therein is secured to at least one of the side ends of the face protection grid. At least one resilient coupling is provided having an arcuate, helmet engagement channel defined therein. This channel is sized to fit snugly within the confines of either one of the side flap ear openings. The channel thereby defines a resiliently compressible helmet attachment flange for insertion through an ear opening in one of the ear flaps of the helmet. The resilient coupling also defines a resiliently compressible mounting clip attachment flange for insertion into the helmet attachment opening in the mounting clip.
The face guard of the invention can be constructed as a guard that extends only across half the face of a wearer. Such a device is very useful for attachment to a baseball batting helmet in which the greatest danger of exposure to injury is to the side of the batter""s face nearest the pitcher. Such a half face guard has an advantage of less obstruction to the view of the batter since the area obscured by the bars of the grid is minimized. In such a device there is a mounting clip only on the side end of the grid closest to the pitcher. In such a device a single resilient coupling is utilized. For a right-handed batter the mounting clip is located on the left side of the grid and is attached to the left ear hole of the helmet by the single resilient coupling employed. For a left-handed batter the attachment would be at the right ear opening of the helmet.
While a half face guard does have certain advantages, it does require different structures for right-handed batters and left-handed batters. Consequently, in a preferred embodiment of the invention the open face protection guard of rigid bars provides a full protection for the entire face of the wearer and has separate rigid mounting clips at each of the side ends of the face protection guard. In this embodiment a pair of resilient couplings are employed.
Therefore, in a preferred aspect, the present invention may be defined as a face guard for a sport helmet having side flaps with ear openings defined therethrough. The face guard is comprised of an open face protection grid of rigid bars curved convex forward and having opposing side ends positionable alongside the helmet side flaps externally thereof. A separate rigid mounting clip having a helmet attachment opening defined therein is secured to each of the side ends of the face protection grid. A pair of resilient couplings are provided. Each of these couplings has an arcuate helmet engagement channel defined therein of a size to fit snugly within the confines of one of the side flap ear openings. A resiliently compressible helmet attachment flange for insertion through an ear opening in one of the ear flaps and a resiliently compressible mounting clip attachment flange for insertion into the helmet attachment opening in the mounting clip are thereby defined.
In still another aspect the invention may be considered to be the combination of a sport helmet having a pair of opposing side flaps with ear openings defined therethrough and a face guard having an open face protection grid of rigid bars curved concave forward and having opposing side ends, at least one rigid mounting clip, and at least one resilient coupling. The mounting clip has a helmet attachment opening defined therein that is secured to at least one of the side ends of the face protection grid. The resilient coupling has an arcuate, helmet engagement channel defined therein. This channel is sized to snugly fit within the confines of either one of the side flap ear openings in the helmet. The resilient coupling thereby defines a resiliently compressible helmet attachment flange for insertion through an ear opening in one of the ear flaps, and a resiliently compressible mounting clip attachment flange for insertion into the helmet attachment opening in the mounting clip.